PERSONIFICATION AND THE FEMININE IN ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

Transcription

1 PERSONIFICATION AND THE FEMININE IN ROMAN PHILOSOPHY While the central ideal of Roman philosophy exempliied by Lucretius, Cicero, and Seneca appears to be the masculine values of self-suiciency and domination, this book argues, through close attention to metaphor and igures, that the Romans also recognized, as constitutive parts of human experience, what for them were feminine concepts such as embodiment, vulnerability, and dependency. Expressed especially in the personiication of grammatically feminine nouns such as Nature and Philosophy herself, the Roman s recognition of this private feminine part of himself presents a contrast with his acknowledged, public self and challenges the common philosophical narrative of the emergence of subjectivity and individuality with modernity. To meet this challenge, ofers both theoretical exposition and case studies, developing robust typologies of personiication and personhood that will be useable for a variety of subjects beyond classics, including rhetoric, comparative literature, gender studies, political theory, and the history of ideas. is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He has published articles in journals such as Helios, Ramus, and Classical Antiquity ranging in subject matter from feminism and the ancient novel to exemplarity and ancient rhetoric, and from deconstruction and the sociology of literature to aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis.

2 PERSONIFICATION AND THE FEMININE IN ROMAN PHILOSOPHY ALEX DRESSLER

3 University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. Information on this title: / h is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Title: Personiication and the feminine in Roman philosophy /. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiiers: LCCN ISBN (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Subjectivity Philosophical anthropology. Human beings. Feminism. Philosophy, Ancient. Classiication: LCC BD 222. D DDC dc23 LC record available at isbn Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

4 To my friend and colleague, Patricia Rosenmeyer

5 Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations page ix xii Introduction 1 1 Love, literature, and philosophy 29 2 h e subjects of personiication and personhood 57 3 Mothers, sons, and metaphysics: others agency and self-identity in the Roman Stoic notion of a person 96 4 Girl behind the woman: Cicero and Tullia, Lucretius and the life of the body-mind Embodied persons and bodies personiied: the phenomenology of perspectives in Seneca, Ep Nature s property in On Duties 1: the feminine communism of Cicero s radical aesthetics 205 Conclusion: repairing the text 249 Bibliography 256 General index 294 Index locorum 304 vii

6 Acknowledgements he following is what I have taken to calling an impulse book : begun as an article on the Stoic idea of oikeiôsis in my irst year as a working academic at the University of Wisconsin Madison, it was burgeoning into a longer and longer article until two super-scholars, Shadi Bartsch and Mustafa Emirbayer, told me independently to just bite the bullet and write it out, which is what I did. he book owes not only its material form to their suggestions in person, but part of its intellectual form to their work: to Shadi for making the terrain of Roman philosophy receptive to literary and theoretical interpretation; to Mustafa for forcing me to recognize the forms that freedom takes in human relations in the social ield. For more immediate reasons, not unrelated to the book s genesis and intimately involved in its growth and maturation, thanks go to the individuals at or associated with Cambridge University Press: to Michael Sharp, for tolerating the book in a variety of stages and inding the right readers; to the readers for patiently working through even longer versions with denser footnotes, and for providing challenging feedback, not least on style. To Catharine Edwards especially, I owe thanks for the gift of a passionate but scrupulously rational eye on the entire manuscript, as well as for several acts of generosity and kindness unconnected to the book over the years. Finally, I thank Sarah Kendall, the scrupulous and particularly patient production manager at Out of House Publishing. At the University of Wisconsin, I have had some amazing students: among those who have contributed in throughtful ways to discussion of this material in seminars and special topics are Susie Drummond, Amanda Gregory, Adrienne Hagen, Kate Rogers, and Matt Vieron. Adrienne and Amanda, along with Gaby Ruchames, also did some patient editing and proofreading of the manuscript at various stages. I also thank my senior colleagues in the Department of Classics: William Aylward, Jef Beneker, Laura McClure, and Jim McKeown. ix

7 x Acknowledgements In its itful course of production and before, I have incurred debts of gratitude for people s patience and provocations, starting with my teachers at the University of Washington, especially Ruby Blondell, Cathy Connors, Alain Gowing, and Stephen Hinds. To these truly professional intellectuals I owe my faith in and ideals of teaching and scholarship. Ruby in particular has subjected parts of the current book to detailed criticism, and while I m sure that she will still think it perverse (a declaration she sometimes makes that I secretly relish), I am especially grateful for her attention to this and other projects and problems that I have brought her since she advised my dissertation; any discipline and gift for communicating my passion herein I owe to the parts of her work, scholarly voice, and teaching that I have internalized. Stephen, for his part, has not seen the book, but there is no question that any moments of interpretive ingenuity, literary insight, and critical wit are the result of his work and teaching and advice through the years. Scholars further aield whose discussion and support have become for me the grace of our social system include Will Altman, Joy Connolly, Catharine Edwards, Rebecca Langlands, Michèle Lowrie, and Amy Richlin. While each has helped me personally in her or his way, it is by and large their work and its concern with the most important questions of our discipline that makes them heroic interlocutors. Closer to home and due immense thanks for their patient toil through this or that chapter are Ada Bronowski and Katherine Wasdin. he former a guarded reader, the latter a sympathetic reader, both saved my writing from obscurity and inaccuracy. To Ada, I owe thanks for telling me what a true philosopher would think, even if I probably didn t assimilate the advice. To Katherine, I owe thanks for advice on clarifying idiosyncratic aspects of my thought, the kind of advice that only an academic who has been your friend for a very long time can provide. With or without reading this material, or even ever discussing it per se, thanks go in particular to Christopher Trinacty, Grant Nelsestuen, my colleague at Wisconsin, Melissa Haynes, and Robin McGill. In addition to their discussion on Latin matters, Grant has made going to work a pleasure, and Chris and Robin have done the same for conferences. Melissa, my erstwhile colleague and friend forever, has not read any of this text but has talked me through tough spots and despair again and again. Friends in the ield to whom I owe additional and special thanks are Ashli Baker and Richard Buxton. he amount of drag-out ights we ve had in graduate school and since makes academia worth it. Outside of classics, and closest to home, I owe thanks to Jimmy Casas Klausen and Ryan Biava, Monique Allaewert and Frédéric Neyrat. Taken together, I have spent years in their company and beneited from their

8 Acknowledgements help and insight, food and booze, and friendship ; for all of this, and of course for the last the most, my gratitude grows inexpressible. For Jimmy and Ryan, since they moved away almost two years ago, my heart aches daily. Last but not least among these scholars is Amanda Jo Goldstein, a learned and passionate reader whose readings I mainly challenge out of jealousy for her greater gifts. To Maria Peeples, my friend in Milwaukee, I owe thanks for the restorative efects of her friendship during some of the hardest times I had writing this (I was with her when I got the news it had been accepted). Closer still to home, to the person who is my home, I owe more and more mostly with delight every single moment of my existence. To Annie Menzel, my wife, my in-house political theorist and authority on progressive politics, I owe endless thanks: for the breadth of knowledge with which her conversation enlivens my thought, for her political sensitivity, moral judgment, and inexhaustible commitment to love and justice in every facet of her and our existence. Amidst these grand and ethical achievements, it would be easy to overlook her more modest contributions to the aesthetics of this book: it is probably a tough read, but most any easy, eloquent parts I owe to her letting me read them to her aloud, or to her reading and editing them herself. To these things for which I thank her, I add most of what makes the hardship of life endurable. In addition and what an addition it is! I thank her now for her perfect partnership in parenting our still new goddess daughter : Phoebe Bayard Dressler Menzel began to head to the shores of light the very day I sent of the completed manuscript; her irst two teeth she cut as I inished revising, Phoebe Bayard, cuius quidem virtus miriica! Finally, to my colleague and my dear, dear friend, Patricia Rosenmeyer I dedicate this book. She read one or two chapters, outlines for various proposals, and drafts and drafts of other work over the years, but mostly I dedicate this book to her to commemorate the time that I have been lucky enough to have her as a colleague and to get to know her family at Wisconsin. Above all, I dedicate it to her in gratitude for her virtues as a scholar and friend. How can someone be such a trenchant intellectual, a luminous guide to the profession, and compassionate and caring all at once? For all this, along with her commitment to fairness, feminism, her love of literature, and her fostering of that love in the rest of us, I am thankful every day. In gratitude for the support that she has provided to me and to so many people in our community, both at Wisconsin and in the ield, I dedicate this book, in its concern with care, community, and literature, to her. Madison, Wisconsin Fall 2014 Poughkeepsie, New York Fall 2015 xi

9 Abbreviations When they are clear and intuitive, I use the abbreviations developed in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 2003, 3 rd ed., rev., hereafter OCD ). Otherwise, I use the irst syllable or irst three or four letters of the ancient author and the irst syllable or three or four letters of the irst or main words of the title of the relevant work, excluding the common prepositional beginnings (e.g., the ad in Seneca s Ad Helviam, which becomes simply Helv.). In some instances, where the work is obscure or the OCD lacks an abbreviation or the abbreviation proves impractical, I use the full name of the author and the full title of the work in Greek, in Latin, or in English translation. With luck, the reader will be able to clarify any remaining uncertainties by comparing the citation in situ with the index locorum. Of important works of reference, standard editions, or seminal contributions to other, relevant ields, the abbreviations that it will help the reader to know are these: AT CSM CPJ Lewis and Short LS Adam and Tannery s edition of the works of Descartes, included in the bibliography, and cited by volume and page like the works of Plato. the English edition of the works of Descartes, edited and translated by Cottingham, Stoothof, and Murdoch, cited in the same way as AT, and also included in the bibliography. Kant s Critique of the Power of Judgment, cited by chapter and section. A Latin Dictionary, edited by C.T. Lewis and C. Short (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1879). Long and Sedley s edition of he Hellenistic Philosophers, included in the bibliography and also cited by fragment, testimonium, or excerpt. xii

10 LSJ OED OLD SE SVF TLL Abbreviations xiii A Greek-English Lexicon, edited by H.G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H.S. Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). he Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968). he Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, cited by volume and page, and included in the bibliography. von Albrecht s Fragments of the Old Stoics, cited by volume and fragment, and included in the bibliography. hesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1900 ). Wherever I thought it would be helpful or convey something of the way I accessed the work, or its position in classical scholarship, I have included all forms of reference to SVF and LS.